It's not so terrifying to me (I'm one of those people who really doesn't have anything to hide) so much as deeply depressing (I'm one of those people who firmly believes it's irrelevant whether you have something to hide or not, principles is principles).

In general, I'm in complete agreement with the outrage in the post, but this paragraph struck me weird, out of place, and indicating someone not all that informed:

Technically, we're not "at war" anywhere in the world. There's no declared war, other than the one on terrorism, which the DOJ terms (using the AUMF wording) a "non-international armed conflict." If this is the justification, terming anything a "war on…" would justify extrajudicial killing, because no one expects murder charges to be brought against them during normal acts of war (i.e., combatants killing other combatants).

"Non-international armed conflict" isn't some term DOJ or the AUMF conjured up out of nothing. It's one of the fundamental types of conflicts recognized by the international laws of war. There are clear standards for whether a conflict is a NIAC or an IAC ("international armed conflict"), derived from universally-accepted international humanitarian law (what we in the U.S. call "laws of war"). Nor did the DOJ decide to say we're in a NIAC simply because we're in a "war on terrorism." First, the Supreme Court itself has said we're in a NIAC (see the Hamdan case).

There are plenty of serious questions to raise about the memo. Whether we're in a NIAC isn't one of them. (The scope of the NIAC, what territories we can carry out strikes in given the laws of war, evidentiary burdens before doing so, etc.--those are all fair questions, among many others.)

There's an argument to be made. I don't endorse this as the correct reading of the statute, but it's an argument at least:

§1(c) makes punishable the publishing or electronic dissemination of "any advertisement" of a device. §3 says it's not unlawful "to advertise for sale" a device "if the advertisement is mailed, sent, or carried [etc.]" to one of an enumerated group of people. The phrase "the advertisement" in §3 clearly refers to an "advertise[ment] for sale," as found earlier in that section. However, in §1, the language is "any advertisement." This leads us to the possibility that §1 envisions "an[] advertisement" that is not an advertisement "for sale" of a device. Nor is it a strained reading of English to claim that an advertisement doesn't necessarily have to publicize something for sale. Just glance at the entry for "advertisement" in the OED, and you'll find numerous instances of the word being used to denote the general notification of someone or some people about something, without any necessary mercantile implication. It's true that we use "advertisement" now generally to denote something intended to convey an offer to sell something, but given the ambiguity in how sections 1 and 3 of the statute seem to be using advertisement ("any advertisement" versus an advertisement specifically "for sale"), we can perhaps conclude that the statute is indeed meant to prohibit the general disclosure of such devices' capabilities, as well as targeting specifically advertisements for sale.